... it strains credibility to discover this amount of missing money in
the FEMA assistance program. New Orleans continues as a gaping hole of
need, and survivors are still farmed out around the country, likely to
remain so in the foreseeable future. THEY can't get help ... but "tens
of thousands of fraudulent" applicants DID? I know, I know -- stuff
happens, Rummy sez so. But "hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars?"

I watched 60 Minutes the other night, viewed amazing footage of open
flatbed trucks carrying huge blocks of clear-wrapped currency into Iraq.
I can see how, on foreign shores and in the midst of chaos, language
barriers, guns and blood, some of that might go missing [but not the
amount they've reported -- not by a long shot.] And we'll not even
discuss that doing something like that even in PEACE time is ... well
... incredibly stupid, let alone unprofessional.

I guess that's the point, isn't it. Can this government do ANYTHING
RIGHT?? Can they govern AT ALL?? Are they ALL blithering idiots? David
Gergen, former adviser to four presidents and pundit, says that the
Bushies know how to run, but they don't know what to do after that.
AMEN!

It's easy to be an armchair critic, here, looking in at what must have
been an overwhelming task [either of them ... pick one.] But the bottom
line remains that there has never -- NEVER -- been an administration
that LOST so much money in misadventure and so quickly. BILLIONS! They
treat it like it isn't theirs ... which, of course, it isn't ... it's
ours. And borrowed, at that. Meanwhile, Iraq and New Orleans are still
needy money pits and places of sorrow and shame.

The report, the trailers, the morgue -- a collection. The last piece
gives you hints as big as elephants, as do they all if you look
carefully, about waste. It really is stunning, the ineptitude and
mindless bureaucracy.

Jude


Katrina fund lost millions to cheats
Peter Whoriskey in Washington
February 15, 2006
http://smh.com.au/news/world/katrina-fund-lost-millions-to-cheats/2006/02/14/113\
9890737108.html

TENS of thousands of people are thought to have fraudulently received
aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina because the relief effort did not
include routine checks that might have spotted such activity,
investigators say.

The extent of the fraud in the $US6 billion ($8 billion) relief effort
had not been calculated but could reach hundreds of millions of dollars,
investigators told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
committee.

"It was a mess. It was a system that was wide open to fraud," said
Gregory Kutz, who led the investigation for the Government
Accountability Office. "All you had to do was call FEMA [the Federal
Emergency Management Agency] and lie, and you could get money."

The report came amid revelations on Monday of questionable activity
during the relief effort, including $US438-a-night lodging in New York,
emergency meals being sold on eBay and cheques being used to buy adult
entertainment and weapons.

But the main focus of Monday's testimony was FEMA's lack of financial
controls as it doled out $US2000 cheques to people who said they were
hit by the storm.

FEMA representatives defended their procedures, saying the urgency of
the situation did not allow for strict identity verification and they
were focused on getting aid to desperate families as quickly as
possible.

Investigators found that about 1000 people applied for aid used the
Social Security numbers of dead people. In one case, a person used 15
Social Security numbers to submit 15 phone applications and received
$US41,000.

Thousands of New Orleans residents made homeless by Katrina became
transients as about 12,000 families across the country, including 4400
in New Orleans, looked for somewhere to stay on Monday, which was the
last day FEMA would pay for their hotel rooms as emergency housing
assistance was phased out. ++


Storm victims leave hotels for sofas, cars
RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Mon, Feb. 13, 2006
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/13856882.htm

NEW ORLEANS - About 12,000 families made homeless by last year's
hurricanes began checking out of their federally funded hotel rooms
around the country Monday after a federal judge let FEMA stop paying
directly for their stays.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised the evacuees from
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that they will still receive federal rent
assistance that they can put toward hotel stays or other housing. But
the agency will no longer pay for their hotel rooms directly.

Earlier in the day, attorneys for the evacuees pleaded with U.S.
District Judge Stanwood Duval for a last-minute reprieve, saying the
rent assistance will not be enough for decent living accommodations or
continued hotel stays.

"These people are going to be homeless. We've heard from a lot of people
who are going to be sleeping in their cars," said Bill Quigley, a lawyer
for the evacuees.

But Duval denied the request.

FEMA said the majority of those checking out had made arrangements for
other housing. But some said they had nowhere to go except their own
cars, a relative's couch or back to a shelter.

Mary Smith looked for a bus to take her to one of the lower-income
neighborhoods across the Mississippi River in suburban New Orleans,
where she was told she might find a rental.

"I only got my rent check last week. It's not enough time to find a
place," said Smith, 43, for whom the Crowne Plaza had become home.

"I got nowhere to go," said 21-year-old Meoshia Davis, pulling her
1-year-old behind her and balancing three bags of clothes. Although
Davis had received her FEMA check, she said the only apartment the
$1,800 could rent was one that was damaged in the storm. She had hoped
it would be finished by her checkout time Monday, but it wasn't.

Several said they were heading back to Houston and Atlanta, their
original evacuation destinations, giving up jobs in New Orleans in
search of a place to sleep.

By Monday afternoon, about 17 people had arrived at a state-run shelter
in Shreveport.

Those who tried to use the rent checks to pay for hotel stays found they
ran out of money fast. "I can't pay no more," said 18-year-old Aziza
Guy, who seemed lost on the wide, asphalt boulevard outside the Day's
Inn.

About 10,500 families, or 88 percent of the 12,000 homeless families,
have received rent-assistance checks from FEMA, said Libby Turner, the
agency's transitional housing director.

At a meeting of state emergency managers in Alexandria, Va., acting FEMA
chief R. David Paulison told reporters the judge's ruling "recognized
that we're doing the right thing for these people."

"We have caseworkers down there and most people have already received
rental assistance," Paulison said. "I just gave approval to purchase
10,000 more travel trailers. We're working also with some of the
apartment owners to rehab some of the apartments down there. We are
going to make sure that people are taken care of. But the judge
recognized that, and recognized that the right thing to do is to get
them out of hotels and into some decent housing."

Monday marks the second wave of evacuees losing FEMA financing of their
hotel rooms. Last week, the occupants of roughly 4,500 rooms lost FEMA
funding after failing to ask the agency for extensions. ++


Chertoff Admits Katrina Response Fumbled
LARA JAKES JORDAN, AP
46 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060215/ap_on_go_co/katrina_washington

WASHINGTON - Acknowledging delayed aid and fumbled coordination,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday the federal
response to Hurricane Katrina fell far short of providing immediate help
to the Gulf Coast that could have saved lives.

Chertoff's Senate testimony came the same day a House panel released a
scathing report concluding that deaths, damage and suffering could have
been decreased if the White House and federal, state and local officials
had responded more urgently to Katrina.

"There are many lapses that occurred, and I've certainly spent a lot of
time personally, probably since last fall, thinking about things that
might have been done differently," Chertoff told the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the Aug. 29 storm.

He called the hurricane "one of the most difficult and traumatic
experiences of my life."

Katrina was one of the costliest and deadliest natural disasters in U.S.
history, killing more than 1,300 people, causing tens of billions of
dollars in damage and forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes.

The House report - called "A Failure of Initiative" - found ample fault
with state and local officials, including delays in ordering early
evacuations in New Orleans. But it also criticized
President Bush for failing to get more deeply involved as the crisis
unfolded.

In a sampling of 63 communications to the White House that the report
documents, at least eight were dated before Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall.
The documents show that presidential advisers were warned about
potential disaster as early as Aug. 27.

"Earlier presidential involvement might have resulted in a more
effective response," the inquiry concluded. The Associated Press
obtained a copy of the report Tuesday.

Chertoff, who took over Homeland Security a year ago Wednesday, oversees
the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinated the federal
response. He promised the senators he would repair many of the
shortfalls by the start of the 2006 hurricane season June 1.

"Our logistics capability in Katrina was woefully inadequate," he said.
"I was astonished to see we didn't have the capability most 21st-century
corporations have to track the flow of goods and services."

Republican and Democratic senators alike lectured Chertoff for his
department's lackluster performance.

Committee Chairwoman Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record),
R-Maine, said Homeland Security's response "must be judged a failure."
She called it "late, uncertain and ineffective."

Federal disaster responders "ran around like Keystone Kops, uncertain
about what they were supposed to do or uncertain how to do it," said
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the panel's top Democrat.

Lieberman needled Chertoff on why the security chief was in Atlanta at a
bird flu seminar on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina hit, instead of
rushing to the disaster scene.

"How could you go to bed that night (Aug. 29) not knowing what was going
on in New Orleans?" Lieberman asked.

Chertoff maintained he did not realize that New Orleans levees had been
breached until the next day. The levee failure resulted in massive
flooding over most of the city, stranding people on rooftops and
rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable.

"When I went to bed, it was my belief ... that actually the storm had
not done the worst that could be imagined," Chertoff said.

The lack of urgency was the core of the House panel's conclusions in a
report detailing "a litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and
absurdities all cascading together, blinding us to what was coming and
hobbling any collective effort to respond."

The 520-page report added, "Government failed because it did not learn
from past experiences, or because lessons thought to be learned were
somehow not implemented."

In one memo that reached the White House shortly after midnight Aug. 30,
a FEMA official reported levee breaches, submerged houses, hundreds of
people on rooftops and bodies floating in the water. Others, two days
later, described a shooting of a National Guardsman at the Superdome and
a hostage situation at Tulane Hospital that turned out to be false.

Still, the House findings noted, "the enormity of Katrina seemed not to
have been fully understood by the White House until at least Tuesday,
Aug. 30."

Chertoff said he would do things differently if he had the chance -
including, most notably, giving onsite responsibility for the relief
effort to someone other than former FEMA director Michael Brown. Brown,
who quit under fire days after Katrina hit, has accused Chertoff and
White House officials of ignoring his warnings on the day of the storm.

Collins told Chertoff "I remain perplexed" about his decision to
designate Brown as disaster coordinator.

Chertoff said there was "no reason to doubt his commitment" at the time.

"If I knew then what I know now about Mr. Brown's agenda, I would have
done something different," Chertoff added.

Responding, Brown maintained in an e-mail to The Associated Press that
Chertoff "hamstrung" him from responding faster by confining him to
Baton Rouge instead of sending him to disaster sites. He also said the
House report supports his position that Homeland Security "has decimated
FEMA to the point it can't do its job."

The hearing highlighted the searing emotions that Katrina evokes nearly
six months after it slammed into the Gulf Coast. At one point, a member
of the audience loudly heckled Chertoff, calling a FEMA decision to
discontinue paying for hotel rooms for evacuees "un-American."

Chertoff sat stoically during the outburst.

The Senate is preparing its own conclusions, due in March, about the
storm response, as is the White House in a report expected by the end of
this month.

Meanwhile, Congress increased the borrowing power of the federal flood
insurance agency in an attempt to meet unprecedented claims from Katrina
and other hurricanes last year.

And White House reconstruction coordinator Don Powell announced $4.2
billion in grants that will probably be used to help uninsured Louisiana
homeowners whose properties inside flood plains were destroyed. The
money is part of an anticipated $18 billion spending plan for the Gulf
Coast. ++


Katrina mobile homes immobile in Arkansas
Susan Roesgen, CNN Correspondent:
Monday, February 13, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/02/katrina-mobile-\
homes-immobile-in.html

I've lived in New Orleans 13 years now, a Yankee who got sucked in by
the smell of gardenias in February and couldn't pull away.

My house is in the part of New Orleans we've started to call the "sliver
by the river," the narrow strip along the Mississippi that didn't flood.
So I'm typing this from the study of my 100-year-old home, with its
hardwood floors and high ceilings, feeling lucky and guilty and numb.

The failure of the levees wiped-out 217,000 homes in New Orleans. Tens
of thousands of people are desperate for any kind of temporary housing
that will allow them to stay here while they rip the moldy sheetrock out
of their homes and try to start over. But there's little housing
available.

Apartment rents have doubled, FEMA-paid hotel rooms are being
phased-out, and FEMA trailers are in short supply. Then this past week,
I saw -- like an oasis in the desert -- 11,000 FEMA mobile homes, real
homes, 3-bedroom, 2-bath beauties (comparatively speaking) -- sitting in
an Arkansas cow pasture.

FEMA says these mobile homes aren't allowed in a flood plain, which
pretty much rules out most of southeast Louisiana. Why did FEMA order
them in the first place if they can't be used in areas where people need
them? That's what I asked, but nobody seems to know. So the mobile homes
sit there, immobile, 450 miles away from the Gulf Coast. ++


Take my FEMA trailer, please
Man's back in rebuilt home, but agency won't respond
Mary Swerczek
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/113998687580320.xm\
l

Matthew Gahagan isn't one of the hundreds of people waiting for a
Federal Emergency Management Agency travel trailer. But he's fed up with
FEMA just the same.

He finished gutting his flooded house in Kenner a month ago. And ever
since, he said, he has been on the phone trying to get somebody to
remove the FEMA trailer he no longer needs from his driveway.

"They told us in the beginning it would be a week," he said. "I can't
believe this. All my friends are telling me, 'You're going to be stuck
with this for a year.' "

With Katrina victims throughout the New Orleans area growing desperate
for trailers, or for keys or electricity to trailers already delivered,
Gahagan's predicament is unusual but not unique. It illustrates a new
bottleneck at the end of the trailer process.

FEMA does not consider it pressing, however.

"Our priority is to get people in housing," agency spokesman James
McIntyre said. "We know it's there, and the problem is we can't give it
back to another applicant right away."

Because of health and safety guidelines, used trailers must be
inspected, and anything broken must be repaired or replaced.

"If there's no major repairs that need to be done, they go back in the
inventory," McIntyre said.

Chris Paolino, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, said
Gahagan's is the only call his office has received about getting rid of
a trailer. The staff gets calls daily from people waiting to receive a
trailer.

"There's no question that FEMA is just totally overwhelmed," said Terry
McCarthy, who coordinates post-Katrina temporary housing for the
Jefferson Parish administration.

Gahagan said the house where he and his parents live took on 18 inches
of water during Hurricane Katrina. They gutted it up to 4 feet and
rewired it, then moved out of the trailer and back into the house in
early January, he said.

Metairie resident Tonya Lacoste has been waiting even longer for FEMA to
remove her trailer. She said her family repaired and moved back into
their house two months ago.

"Every time I hear a story of someone who needs a trailer, it breaks my
heart to see this trailer in front of my house not being used," Lacoste
said. "Personally, I know friends of mine that could use it."

Gahagan and Lacoste said they've offered to remove the trailers
themselves but were rebuffed by FEMA.

"You have to have a license to do that," said McIntyre, the agency's
spokesman. "It requires a specific license to tow a travel trailer." ++


'Taj Mahal' of Morgues Closes as Pace Slows in New Orleans
SHAILA DEWAN
February 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/national/nationalspecial/15morgue.html

CARVILLE, La., Feb. 14 -After using it for only 10 weeks, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency has shut down a $17 million state-of-the-art
morgue built to handle victims of Hurricane Katrina, agency officials
said Tuesday.

The morgue, which can decontaminate and examine 150 bodies a day and has
living space for nearly 500 workers, is closing because the number of
bodies coming in has dwindled to about one a week, said Chuck Smith, a
FEMA official.

Mr. Smith said the morgue had been developed when officials believed
there would be 5,000 deaths. Instead, there have been about 1,300 in
Louisiana so far, and it was apparent within a few weeks of the
hurricane that the number of deaths would be 1,000 to 2,000.

"It is the Taj Mahal of forensic science; it is a beautiful place," said
Dr. Frank Minyard, the New Orleans coroner. "But by the time we moved
there we were finished with all the autopsies."

The shutdown began over the past weekend, when the morgue accepted its
last body, found in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. FEMA has begun
removing all the equipment in the morgue and placing it into storage in
preparation for the next disaster with high casualties.

State and local officials say they would have preferred that the federal
government leave the equipment for their use, expressing concern that
dozens of bodies remain to be found in the debris and damaged houses
from the storm. Although state officials signed off on the morgue's
disassembly in December, Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical
director, said that he thought the plan was flexible, and that the
facility would still be usable after FEMA was gone.

But Mr. Smith said the federal agency's role had ended.

"Our mission is to support the state and local governments," said Mr.
Smith, the incident commander of the Disaster Mortuary Operational
Response Team at the Carville site. "When we get to the point where
they're no longer overwhelmed, it's time for us to go." The team, known
as D-Mort, is a part of FEMA. After Hurricane Katrina, it was given the
job of helping to identify storm victims.

Of the 910 bodies that were examined by D-Mort, all but 95 have been
identified. About 100 have been identified but their families have not
been located, or they have yet to be picked up by funeral homes.

Among D-Mort's last actions will be to transfer the remaining bodies to
New Orleans, where officials are planning to build a mausoleum.

The morgue also examined 610 bodies washed out of cemeteries after the
flooding caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and put them in new
coffins, officials said.

The Orleans Parish morgue was destroyed in the storm, and Dr. Minyard,
the coroner, said he hoped to sign a lease on an unused funeral home at
the end of this week. FEMA will pay to replace equipment he already had,
but neither he nor the state had a dental X-ray machine or the software
that compares dental records, all of which will be removed from the
Carville morgue. Nearly 400 identifications so far have been made using
dental records.

No one seemed to know what would happen to the 70,000-square-foot
building that housed the morgue, built from the ground up on private
land belonging to Bear Industries, a construction supply company. ++



It is not enough to be compassionate; you must act.
-- The Dalai Lama

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